Even when when you can’t hear it, the city of Salzburg is ensconced in music. With the Salzburg Music Festival just starting it seemed like everyone had taken to the streets to play Beethoven Quartets, especially its many music conservatory students.

Molly, Tom, Barb and I spent a week in a chalet at the Ropferhof Guesthouse in the Tirol region of Austria. The property is set next to a large network of hiking trails and consists of a chalet, large guesthouse and the Ropferstub’m restaurant which sit high above the Inn Valley, overlooking Alpine peaks . The owners,…

The first thing we noticed about the Alps is that everyone is using the hiking trails: we’ve seen numerous 3 year-olds scaling peaks with their parents and an endless string of 80 year-old couples have passed by us on trails above the treeline.